September 30, 2013

It is very important in the world of reading to learn the basics of letters first. The idea of coaching word recognition plays a vital part in a child's learning and reading for later life. It's where it all begins and is very important, and needs to be grasped to succeed in reading. I agree with the practices and tasks that were talked about in our readings this week however, I agree more with the idea that it's just as important for the students to learn the meanings of the words as it is to know how to spell the words. Growing up I remember having vocabulary lists, each week we got a certain list of words and we had to find their definitions and had to be able to spell them and recognize them by the end of the week. My favorite activity from our reading is probably the "Making Words" lesson. I like the idea of having a certain number and assortment of letters and seeing what the children come up with. I think it is important to correlate the stem of the word, like stated in Clark's article, with learning more words and expanded your vocabulary. Many words result from lots of other words. There are compound words and prefixes and suffixes, but children need to learn the possible root words first. Learning the word families are a big part in learning the sight words that students need to grasp a basic understanding of what they read.

http://joyfullearninginkc.blogspot.ca/2012/03/word-work-in-kc.html

Sometimes in activities such as "Guess the Covered Word" some students can be more advanced than others, this could result in some students having wider vocabularies and other not having a clue what the word could be. I really agree with combining teacher influence with other student influence. Sometimes teachers can talk and it sound like complete gibberish, but having help from another student can seem more on a level of understanding. However, it can also make a student feel inferior as well. I feel that group learning is important, but sometimes it is important for the teacher to create learning groups as well. Groups could result in leaving a student that may be behind and out of the spectrum, resulting in the student only falling further behind. "Sounding out" I feel is still an effective way of learning. Over the summer I nanny a little girl that just started kindergarden this year. She's proof to me that the "sounding out" method is affective. When we would do our reading time, she not only sounded out the words but could figure out what sentences said all on her own. She now is one of the best readers in her class and absolutely loves to read. "Sounding out" can give students a aha! moment. When students sound out words they are not just putting the sounds together but figuring out was letter sounds are appropriate for each word. This is where definitions are very important. Don't you agree? Why or why not? What kind of word learning activities do you remember? Do you think they made you a better reader at an early age?

Here is a link for forming word family ideas:
http://joyfullearninginkc.blogspot.ca/2012/03/word-work-in-kc.html

Pictures:
http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/product/productDet.jsp?productItemID=845524441791354